Under the terms of the deal reached in January, Orascom Telecom will invest $400 million in network infrastructure and license fees over the first three years to develop the network. Orascom said it was the first foreign telecommunications company to be awarded a North Korean commercial telecommunications license.

It was not clear what restrictions, if any, would be imposed on the network, which provides data capabilities as well as phone services. Ordinary North Koreans are forbidden from having cellular phones, and the government maintains strict controls over Internet access.

Orascom has said it intends to cover the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and most of the major cities during the first year of service. North Korea, one of the world’s poorest countries, is pushing hard to give its capital city a facelift — a makeover coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the communist nation founded in September 1948.

Orascom Telecom spokeswoman Rasha Mohamed confirmed in an e-mail on Sunday that the service will be launched on Monday. Additional details were not immediately available.

Read the full story in Associated Press here.

China has the world’s biggest population of mobile phone users and adoption of 3G — which has been long delayed — was eagerly anticipated by equipment suppliers, which are seeing demand elsewhere decline due to the global financial crisis.

“The 3G licenses will be issued either later this year or early next year,” Li Yizhong, whose ministry regulates telecoms, said at a news conference.

Third-generation mobile phone technology supports Web surfing, video downloads and other added services. Its adoption in China is expected to boost demand for mobile service and spur growth of new services.

China’s mobile phone market has grown to 650 million accounts, Li said.

Foreign suppliers such as Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony-Ericsson will be competing with fast-growing Chinese rivals Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. to sell switching gear, base stations and other technology.

Read the fullsroty in Associated Press here.

“We must realize the fact that disasters threaten sustained economic growth of the society and the country.”

These were the words of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani addressing the opening ceremony of the first National Disaster Risk Management Conference. The function, reported Associated Press of Pakistan, was organized to mark the Disaster Awareness Day observed annually after the catastrophic earthquake which struck country’s northern areas in October 2005, killing 73,000 people and leaving 3.5 million homeless.

On the other side of the border Congress President Sonia Gandhi has said there is a need of effective disaster management to mitigate the woes of the people in future calamities, with floods affecting several districts of Bihar and other parts of the country. “The people of India have contributed generously to our relief efforts but we need to strengthen and streamline our responses to all disasters and ensure that rehabilitation of the flood-affected continues on a war footing,” Gandhi said in her “Letter to Congresspersons” in the latest issue of party mouthpiece ‘Congress Sandesh’.

More or less the same sentiments but in a more action oriented manner were expressed at Washington DC at the two day workshop on ‘Disaster Risk Management in the Information Age’ on Oct 8-9.

I made two presentations. The first one, the opening remarks, was more a panoramic view how ICTs can be used in different phases of disaster management, while the second one focused on two projects, Sahana by Lanka Software foundation and our own Haz-Info – a pilot for a Community based Early Warning System.

More details with presentation slides of all speakers are available here.

The findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project challenge the argument that broadband providers need to more aggressively roll out supply to meet demand.

Only 14 percent of dial-up users say they’re stuck with the older, slower connection technology because they can’t get broadband in their neighborhoods, Pew reported Wednesday.

Thirty-five percent say they’re still on dial-up because broadband prices are too high, while another 19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade. The remainder have other reasons or do not know.

Read the full story in Associated Press here.

SAN MIGUEL, Philippines–It’s Thursday, so 18-year-old Dennis Tiangco is off to a bank to collect his weekly allowance, zapped by his mother–who’s working in Hong Kong–to his electronic wallet: his cell phone.

Sauntering into a branch of GM Bank in the town of San Miguel, Dennis fills out a form, sends a text message via his phone to a bank line dedicated to the service.

In a matter of seconds, the transaction is approved and the teller gives him P2,500 (US$54), minus a 1-percent fee. He doesn’t need a bank account to retrieve the money.

More than 5.5 million Filipinos now use their cell phones as virtual wallets, making the Philippines a leader among developing nations in providing financial transactions over mobile networks.

Mobile banking services, which are also catching on in Kenya and South Africa, enable people who don’t have bank accounts to transfer money easily, quickly and safely. It’s spreading in the developing world because mobile phones are much more common than bank accounts.

The system is particularly useful for the 8 million Filipinos–10 percent of the country’s citizens–who work overseas and send money home, like Dennis’ mother, Anna Tiangco. Previously, she sent money via a bank wire transfer, which costs HK$20 (US$2.50, â‚1.83) and takes two days to clear. The cell phone method costs only HK$1 (13 U.S. cents, 9 euro cents) and is nearly instantaneous.

“The good thing here is, wherever my children are, they can text me and I can send money immediately,” she said by telephone from Hong Kong.

Consumers also can store limited amounts of money on their cell phones to buy things at stores that participate in the network–although this practice isn’t yet widespread in the Philippines.

Many more Filipinos use their phones to send airtime values called “loads” to prepaid subscribers. A parent, for example, can send a 60-peso load to replenish a child’s cell phone, charged to the parent’s account.

While Japanese and South Korean consumers have been using cell phones as virtual wallets for several years, those systems use a computer chip implanted in handset that allows people to buy things by waving the phone in front of a sensor. The Philippine system relies on simple text messages, which cost just 1 peso (2 US cents) to send.

The 41 million cell phone users in the Philippines are avid texters. The electronic connections have fostered a culture of quick greetings and forwarded jokes. Text messages also played a key role in mobilizing crowds that fueled the 2001 “people power” revolt that ousted President Joseph Estrada.

The Philippines’ two biggest mobile service providers, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications, have harnessed this penchant for text messaging to enable consumers to enter the world of e-commerce.

Tapping into the cash flow from overseas Filipinos–who sent home US$12.7 billion last year–Globe and Smart forged partnerships with foreign mobile providers and banks, as well as with local banks and merchants, to create a network that allows users to send and receive cash internationally.

When Anna Tiangco wants to send cash home, for example, she goes to a branch of her local provider, Hong Kong CSL Ltd., where a clerk credits her cell phone with the amount she has brought with her. She then transfers the money to family members via text messages–in essence instructing her providers to deduct money from her balance to the recipients she indicates.

If a cell phone loaded with cash values is lost or stolen, the money can’t be tapped as long as the personal identification number isn’t revealed. Control over the funds can be restored with a replacement SIM card from either mobile provider.

The system was “built for remote payments and for the unbanked markets,” said Rizza Maniego Eala, president of G-Xchange, Globe’s subsidiary in charge of its G-Cash money transfer service.

Eala said her company’s 500,000 G-Cash users transfer about US$100 million monthly (â‚73 million), but she declined to say how many transactions involve remittances from overseas.

Smart offers a slightly different money transfer system, used by about 5 million Filipinos, that links cash or a debit card to a cell phone.

Users load up their phones with money via text messages. The card–which costs P200 but does not require a bank account–can then be used to purchase goods in establishments that accept MasterCard, or to withdraw cash from an ATM machine.

Smart Communications spokesman Ramon Isberto said each time the recipient spends the money, the sender receives a transaction message. That allows the sender to see how the funds are used.”The added value there now is that Filipinos overseas have greater control over their funds. Believe me, that is important to them,” he said.

Smart and UAE’s leading telecommunications operator, Etisalat, have agreed to provide money transfer service to hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in the Middle East. Smart also will soon launch a remittance system in Bahrain in partnership with MTC-Vodafone and Ahli United Bank there, and Banco de Oro in the Philippines, Isberto said.

“The bank products remain clearly bank products. We positioned ourselves as an enabler for banks and other financial institutions to provide products and services to their customers in ways they would otherwise not have been able to,” he said.

Aside from transferring cash and making purchases, both Globe and Smart also allow their users to pay bills with their phones. Anna Tiangco said she pays her family’s electric bills in San Miguel from Hong Kong via text messages, just like she sends money.

“Even if we are far apart, it’s like we are still together,” she said. “This is like my wallet now.”

(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Largely because of the mobile phone boom in developing countries, telephone service has quadrupled in the past decade to 4 billion lines worldwide, according to a report from the UN telecommunications agency.

The International Telecommunications Union counts 1.27 billion fixed lines and 2.68 billion mobile accounts. The total number of people represented by those figures is unclear because many people, particularly in industrial countries, have both kinds of service.

The increase has been especially strong in developing countries that have been able to provide cellular phone service to tens of millions of people much more cheaply than having to wire up homes and offices for fixed-line telephones.

As a result, 61% of the world’s mobile subscribers are in developing countries, the ITU said. China and India, for example, together added almost 200 million mobile subscribers to the global total in the first three months of this year.

In 1996 there were fewer than 1 billion fixed-line and mobile phone subscribers altogether. Fixed-line subscriptions have grown slowly since then, but mobile has taken off, showing “spectacular success,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, one of the report’s authors.

The report also said more than 1 billion people in the world use the Internet.

Although the least developed countries lag in telecom service, growth is picking up in Africa, thanks to advances in technology that enable broadband connections over mobile phones.

But the report said countries may need to change their regulatory requirements if the benefits of newer networks are to be realized.

© 2007 The Associated Press.
© 2007 Dialog, a Thomson business. All rights reserved

The website allows anyone – from amateurs to professionals – to post news stories and upload images, videos, and audio files. The company, that claims to be the world’s fastest-growing news organisation, says 120,000 people from over 140 countries have contributed to the site since its launch in 2005.

The website relies for its content on “crowdsourcing” – that it describes as being similar to outsourcing, but with unpaid or low-paid amateurs.

Participatory journalism has already begun to influence traditional news organisations. Gannett, the largest chain of newspapers in the US has begun incorporating news, blogs and community discussions from its readers in over 90 newspapers across the country.

Elsewhere, the world’s largest news agency, the Associated Press (AP,) has struck a deal to distribute information, images and videos from citizen-journalists posted on NowPublic.com to news organisations around the globe. Read more.

BBC NEWS | Technology | $100 laptop project launches 2007

The so-called XO machine is being pioneered by Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab in 2004.

Test machines are expected to reach children in February as the project builds towards a more formal launch.

Wireless networking

Mr Negroponte told the Associated Press news agency that three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks.

The laptop is powered by a 366-megahertz processor from Advanced Micro Devices and has built-in wireless networking.
It has no hard disk drive and instead uses 512 MB of flash memory, and has two USB ports to which more storage could be attached.

According to the 17 July timeline.ppt, the PTWC and the Japanese Center issued the first bulletin within 17 minutes of the earthquake. The Minister indicates that the entire country was fully prepared within 6 minutes of receiving that bulletin. This may possibly be a world record.

If we assume the 23 minutes was counted from the time the warning was received, the country was ready 40 minutes after the earthquake. Even that is extraordinary. The Sri Lankan official who was interviewed by the Associated Press does not seem to have been aware of this great achievement and simply talked about plans and sirens in religious establishments. It appears that the international press is badly informed or is maliciously supressing Sri Lanka’s achievements.

The Minister further stated ” all we need is 20 minutes to warn the people if they are in imminent danger since there are 15-20 disaster management officials in all coastal districts who are ready to evacuate the people.” The Times states that the disaster management personnel are mainly army, navy and air force officers who have undergone “vigorous training to evacuate people living on the coast to higher grounds which have now been identified.”
“The people in these areas too are trained to follow route maps to reach safety in case of a tsunami. Police in these areas have been given megaphones to help in the process.”

The Ministry has already received funds from UNESCAP to build three tsunami warning towers in the Eastern, Northern and Southern Provinces and hopes to build another 25 towers by December 26 [2006] to mark the second anniversary of the disaster, according to the Times.

To summarize:

• Sri Lanka only needs twenty minutes to act on a tsunami warning. It took precisely 23 minutes on 17 July 2006, but action is being taken to shave off 3 minutes from the response time.
• There are 15-20 disaster management officials in each coastal district, mainly from the forces, giving a total of 15 x 10 = 150 in all. [One assumes different arrangements are in place for Jaffna, Mulativu, Mannar, Kilinochchi, Trinco, Batticaloa, Ampara districts which are not fully under government control]
• They have identified the vulnerable populations and trained them.
• They have also identified the evacuation paths and the safe locations to move the people to.
• The Police, not the disaster management personnel, have been issued megaphones to assist in evacuations, suggesting close coordination between the Police and the disaster personnel.
• Funds have been received for three warning towers, one each for the Northern, Eastern and Southern provinces.
• Funds have not been received, but will be sought for 25 additional towers. Fund raising, procurment under government procedures and construction will be all completed within five months, giving a total of 28 operational warning towers along the coastline by 26 December 2006.

If all this is true, there is no question that Sri Lanka is the country that is best prepared for a tsunami. On this strength alone, the Disaster Minister should be nominated to a UN post, shortly after the inauguration of the 28 warning towers on 26 December 2006. We have no doubt he will be accepted with acclaim.

We will start the event by lighting the traditional oil lamp. Next is a 2 minute meditation.

Nuwan Waidyanatha –

Welcome all partners including, Dr. Gordon Gow (University of Alberta), Dr. Dileeka Dias (Director Dialog Communication Research Lab), Prof Rohan Samarajiva (Director LIRNEasia), Mr. Nanadana Jayasinghe (Director Sarvodaya Disaster Management center), most importantly the Sarvodaya Participants (ICT Guardians).

Rohan Samarajiva –

We started the lat Mile HazInfo Program on January 23, 2006. The objective of my talk is to introduce you to the framework used in this project. The attendees are people who have faced the great tragedy that happened in December 26, 2004. Since then, 20 months later, we still have no solution in our nation.

3 Tsunamis have occurred in the Indian Ocean within the last 20 months. The last tsunami killed over 500 in Indonesia.

We can excuse ourselves for not having a warning system for the 2004 tsunami. But what about the next one? We cannot give excuses any further.

Before we go in to the details I will present the evidence and how is our preparedness– (Associated Press)

- local time 14:19 a Earthquake happens in the Indian Ocean,- PTWC issues a warning 17 minutes later- 39 minutes later first wave hits the coast

- message reads … affective coutries Indonesia and Australia

According to the Associated Press, Indonesia promises to roll out warning system in 2009. Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie told Associated press “ we are preparing one, but is not finished”. “After earthquake occurred people ran up hill”, V. President of Indonesia

Warning system links

Link 1 – Issue message to from the detection centers

Link 2 – Warn the Government Officials of threats

Link 3 – Warn first-Responders such as police and local government agents

Link 4 – Warn the last mile

Can we talk in past tense instead of future tense. Two other Nations ARE QUIPED with early warning system. Thailand has built a warning towers on beaches across its southern coast. Malaysia HAS positioned two buoys off its coast and have tested the system.

Now countries that speak in future tense; Sri Lanka has a plan to install a national warning system and information will be passed to villages by phones or national media

Rohan asks questions from the audience …

Do you get warnings through the gov now – audience NO

Do you have sirens in Churches, Mosques, and Temples as the Government has promised – audience NO

“Physical world of hazards, symbolic worlds, link technologies & institutions that work imperfectly.”

The Last-Mile HazInfo project is not a public warning system, it is a closed network alerting system. The Last-Mile project envisions on overcoming the lessons learned from the 2004 tsunami — keep ahead of congestions, address point-to-multiple media

We will provides the knowledge for the last mile to make their own response plans and when they are provided with them risk information. The last-Mile First-Responders will react based on the training and the severity of the hazard information.

We do not tell people to evacuate or take action but we only provide the know how and the information for the last mile to make their own decisions

10 deaths and 5 premature births as a result of inappropriate warning by the government in after the great Nyas earthquake in March. The incident happened at night where a people were sleeping.
Disaster Management is a village level duty. Therefore, we will only provide risk information; but will not ask people to evacuate. Sarvodaya is not authorized to issue public warnings but can develop a good information communication network to provide the necessary Disaster related information for local awareness and response planning.

The last-Mile system overcomes all these problems where a wakeup feature has been introduced. This is to help the Government by preparing the last mile.

First phase will evaluate how the organizational level of the villages and whether training is necessary for such a system.

Ultimate objective is to use the research findings to develop a model to implement an alerting solution in 226 of the Tsunami affected villages as a phase 2 of this project; phase 3 will implement a early warning solution for the 15000 Sarvodaya villages.

Gordon Gow –

Objective is to make everyone comfortable with the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Presentation will highlight the most relevant aspects that deal with the LM-HWS project. It is a core function of the project

Several Needs:

• deliver messages to multiple technologies
• Need to ensure accuracy and consistency in the content
• - Need future expansion and interoperability

CAP is a mean to deliver information to a diverse set of technology which will be tested on Addressable Satellite Radio (ASR), Fixed Phones, Mobile Phones, Remote Alarm Device (RAD) and VSATs.

CAP Background

• standardize content of alerts across all hazards and enable multi-media dissemination
• Works started by the Partnership for Public Warning in 2002
• PPW submitted a report to OASIS in 2004 – Version 1.0 in the project we are using Version 1.1 approved in 2005
• XML-based data interchange format being implemented by government and private sector organizations

Why use CAP

• Open source protocol, which means it is free for us to use
• systematic Message Composition
• Multimedia distribution of single message
• Customization and filtering possibility
• Growing international recognition and implementation (e.g. WCATWC)
• Contribution to the evolution of CAP standard itself

All communication systems can be broken into 3 layers –

1. Content Layer: warning messages
2. Applicant Layer: mobile phones (WAP, Java, SMS, CB), telephone, radio (text display, text-to-voice), Internet (pop up display, email, rss)
3. Physical transportation layer (wireless networks and wired networks)

CAP fits in the Application Layer of the communication hierarchy.

A raw CAP message contains the XML tags and is annoying to read (raw software code). A CAP message viewed through a browser still looks very hard to read (raw information only). After applying a style-sheet to the message it can be converted in to a human readable message (clear message).

It very common to use web links in the message to direct readers to additional information such as a map of the effected areas.

A CAP “profile document defines its implementation for the LM-HWS, which is found in the Hazard-Information-Hub (HIH) guidelines; i.e CAP Profile. First-responders must understand certain features of the CAP profile: Alert, Information, resources, Area segments.

The 3 language problem has been solved by using multiple Information blocks; i.e. An Info block for Tamil, Sinhala, and English per message. The priority of the message is based on 3 pieces of the message: Urgency, Severity, Certainty. Urgent messages means that the community must act immediately; high priority implies that the community must be put on stand by; other a low priority message implies that the community must stay vigilant and keep a look out for hazards.

A government warning will be relayed by the HIH over the Sarvodaya network whenever it is issued. HIH will simply copy the government message and past it in the “description” element of the CAP message and set the “Event” as a “government warning”, which is one of the predefined hazard events in CAP.